‘Wage envy’ between AI workers and their peers is a corporate time bomb

THE late rapper, The Notorious BIG, might not have been one for financial statements, but he would have summed up Samsung Electronics’ latest numbers thusly: “Mo money, mo problems.”

On Jul 7, the world’s largest memory chipmaker reported that its preliminary quarterly profit surged by 1,900 per cent year on year, thanks to the world’s insatiable artificial intelligence-driven demand for its products.

For any other company, a third straight quarter of record operating profit would be a bed of roses. But at Samsung, that could make its “wage envy” problem among workers in different departments an even thornier matter.

Back in May, a high-stakes negotiation with union members resulted in a deal that handed some of Samsung’s memory chip workers about US$400,000 in bonuses on the back of the AI boom, while employees at its mobile and consumer electronics divisions received a comparative pittance of US$4,000.

Everyone knows that comparison is the thief of joy, and workers on the short end of Samsung’s bonus stick chafed at the inequity, wearing black ribbons on their chests – typically a symbol of mourning in South Korea – to signal their dissent.

It will be poor consolation to someone making televisions or washing machines at Samsung, but the pay chasm with their colleagues is simply a microcosm of what is happening in firms worldwide. On one side are the workers closely orbiting AI; on the other, everybody else.

In Singapore, for example, AI salaries are rising up to five times faster than overall wages. And in 2025, advertised roles in the government and public sector that required AI skills were reportedly going for a 107 per cent wage premium compared to non-AI roles in the same sector.

Disparities in divisional pay and prospects are neither new nor necessarily unjust. But rarely has the gap opened this fast or wide.

The question of who deserves what, always uncomfortable, is about to get trickier to answer.

AI haves and have-nots

Companies suddenly lifted by the AI tide face a dizzying predicament: Underpay the star engineers, and they might defect to a competitor. Pay top performers more by holding back the spoils from everyone else, and they risk gutting the foundational workforce that kept the lights on for decades.

In navigating this AI-and-chip upheaval, there is a case to be made for firms paying less-stellar divisions a “stability premium” that is calculated independently of division-specific performance.

The semiconductor sector is notoriously cyclical, and when the AI infrastructure hype eventually cools down, management might have to turn back to those boring televisions and washing machines to pay the bills.

The premium does not need to close the bonus gap, but should be large enough to signal that the company is not treating the wider payroll as disposable in the meantime.

Of course, the money has to come from somewhere, so it would mean shrinking the high-flying division’s pot and risking those employees being poached.

Samsung, at least, has given its stars longer-term skin in the game by paying out its semiconductor bonus in shares that vest over years.

But that move will not ameliorate any resentment their colleagues might feel toward them.

Samsung and its peers might find that the bigger challenge lies in building the figurative sort of equity – making workers feel like they have been treated fairly – and that might be harder to engineer than a groundbreaking chip.